In a paper published in Science Bulletin, an international team of physicists from Singapore and China demonstrates how quasi-bound states in the continuum (QBICs) can induce abrupt lateral beam shifts in the terahertz regime. By applying Brillouin zone folding to a compound grating waveguide, the researchers created a QBIC band that enables sudden and significant beam shifts, offering new insights into real-space QBIC properties and potential applications in sensing and wavelength multiplexing.

The formation of a strong coordination structure, [Zn(H₂O)₆]²⁺ often increases direct contact between the solvated H₂O and Zn anodes on the inner Helmholtz layer, which exacerbates undesirable side reactions and dendrite growth, hindering the practical application of aqueous Zn metal batteries. Researchers identify that the solvated H₂O can be effectively minimized by an artificial solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) consisting of highly nitrogen-doped amorphous carbon (NC) and perfluorosulfonic acid polymer (Nafion). Theoretical and experimental analyses reveal that NC raises the Fermi level of the composite SEI and activates the non-coordinating charge transfer from the SEI to [Zn(H₂O)₆]²⁺, which leads to ultrafast desolvation of hydrated Zn-ions in the outer Helmholtz layer; while the Nafion framework ensures selective transport channels for Zn ions. Remarkably, the derived NC-Nafion@Zn symmetric cell exhibits a long lifespan (3400 h, 1 mA cm^-2; 2000 h, 5 mA cm^-2); moreover, the NC-Nafion@Zn//Mn₄O₃-carbon nanotubes full battery delivers ultralong cycling stability of 9300 cycles at 2 A g^-1 with a high retention of 91.3%.

A recent paper published in National Science Review presents a multi-space alignment approach for cross-species and cross-modality electroencephalogram (EEG) based epileptic seizure detection. By employing deep learning techniques, including domain adaptation and knowledge distillation, it aligns cross-species and cross-modality EEG signals to enhance the detection capability beyond traditional within-species and within-modality models. Experiments on multiple scalp and intracranial EEG datasets of humans and canines demonstrated substantial improvements in the detection accuracy, achieving over 90% AUC scores for cross-species and cross-modality seizure detection with extremely limited labeled data from the target species/modality. This is the first study that demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating heterogeneous data from different species and modalities to improve EEG-based seizure detection performance.

The capability to switch “on” and “off” between infrared stealth states has been regarded as a future technology and is expected to play an important role in defense as well as many other fields. Towards this goal, Scientist in China used the non-volatile phase change material Ge₂Sb₂Te₅(GST) and proposed a switchable infrared stealth bilayer metafilm. By adjusting the states of GST, the infrared radiation characteristics of the target can be flexibly controlled between the infrared stealth and the non-stealth states. The technique will promote the research towards practical applications of intelligent infrared stealth technology.